Electricity from biogas

Biogas is a medium-Btu methane and carbon dioxide mix produced by bacterial decomposition of organic matter. Its sources include landfills, waste water sludges, and animal wastes. It can fuel energy applications, of which electricity generation is a frequently-preferred option. The greatest current U.S. biogas recovery and energy use is at landfills, where biogas at about 80 landfill sites fuels a total of approximately 300 MWe. Wastewater treatment plants and confined animal waste management systems support additional electric power production. Generation of electricity from biogas can present difficulties due to the generally small scale of the generating facility, variable energy content of the gas, fluctuating availability, contaminant problems, and often-demanding control needs. However, such difficulties are being successfully addressed and economics for electricity generation are often favorable as biogas can be essentially {open_quotes}free{close_quotes} fuel. Biogas recovery and use has the additional advantage of mitigating a potent greenhouse gas. Biogas from U.S. landfills alone could fuel about 1% of U.S. electrical generation while giving climate change benefit equivalent to reducing CO{sub 2} emissions in the electricity sector by more than 10%. Growth in landfill gas use will be facilitated by recent regulations, advances in equipment, and improved management techniques such as {open_quotes}controlledmore » landfilling{close_quotes}. The potential for biogas recovery and electricity production from sewage sludges, animal wastes and other organic resources such as agricultural residues is uncertain but probably exceeds the estimate for landfills.« less